Arrigo Sacchi with Italy at the 1994 World Cup finals

ARRIGO SACCHI

Arrigo Sacchi is an Italian former professional football coach. While Sacchi may have never played soccer professionally, he was twice manager of AC Milan (1987–1991, 1996–1997) and achieved great success. He won the Serie A title in his 1987–88 debut season and then dominated European football by winning back to back European Cups in 1989 and 1990. From 1991 to 1996, he was head coach of the Italy national team and led them to the 1994 FIFA World Cup Final, where they lost to Brazil in a penalty shoot-out.

Sacchi is regarded as one of the greatest managers of all-time and his Milan side (1987–1991) is widely regarded to be one of the greatest club sides to ever play the game, and by some to be the greatest of all-time. Sacchi was never a professional football player and for many years worked as a shoe salesman. This led to his famous quote directed at those who questioned his qualifications: “I never realized that in order to become a jockey you have to have been a horse first.” Another famous Sacchi quote is that “football is the most important of the least important things in life.”

Arrigo Sacchi

ARRIGO SACCHI INFO

DATE OF BIRTH: April 1, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH: Fusignano, Italy
NATIONALITY: Italian
HEIGHT: 1.70 m (5 ft 7 in)
WEIGHT: N/A
POSITIONS: Coach / Manager

SOCCER COACHING CAREER / MANAGER CAREER

YEARS / TEAM / APPS / (GOALS)
1973–1976 Fusignano
1976–1977 Alfonsine
1977–1978 Bellaria
1978–1982 Cesena (youth)
1982–1983 Rimini
1983–1984 Fiorentina (youth)
1984–1985 Rimini
1985–1987 Parma
1987–1991 Milan
1991–1996 Italy
1996–1997 Milan
1998–1999 Atlético Madrid
2001 Parma

ARRIGO SACCHI VIDEOS

A Brief History of Arrigo Sacchi

Few coaches have made such a significant impact – as he did with Milan – over such a short period of time. The high defensive line, the pressing game so omnipresent today – and utilised by a number of the most talented coaches – would not have taken the form they did without the influence of Arrigo Sacchi.

Arrigo Sacchi and The Rise of AC Milan 1987-1991

Today’s video is a little special and it’s about the AC Milan legend Arrigo Sacchi. In today’s video, I’ve analyzed the coach that changed the fate of AC Milan and created a team that changed the shape of Italian football. In this video, I’ve analyzed AC Milan’s playing style and their quick vertical passing and pressing.

Football’s Greatest Managers – Arrigo Sacchi

CHAMPIONS! The Arrigo Sacchi Philosophy FM21 Tactics

FM21 TACTIC: Arrigo Sacchi was a nonconformist in Italy. Sacchi’s ability to stand out from the crowd helped his rapid rise through the Italian pyramid. This FM21 tactic and video highlight the key principles of Sachi’s tactic as we try to recreate that.

Arrigo Sacchi AC Milan Defensive Offside Trap

For some context, at the time, prior to the off side rule change, an offside infraction was called if any player was behind the last defender, even if that player was not part of the play and even if the player who received the ball was on side.

Chatting with Arrigo Sacchi – the days of old and AC Milan

Arrigo Sacchi is one of the best managers of all time. The legendary Italy and AC Milan coach won back-to-back European Cup titles with the Rossoneri, while he took four-time winners Italy to a second place finish at the 1994 World Cup. Beyond the Game’s Semra Hunter had the pleasure to sit down with Sacchi to discuss his sensational career.

ARRIGO SACCHI QUOTES

  • My greatest goal was to make people have fun.
  • I never realized that to become a jockey you needed to be a horse first.
  • Great clubs have had one thing in common throughout history, regardless of era and tactics. They owned the pitch and they owned the ball. That means when you have the ball, you dictate play and when you are defending, you control the space.
  • The accent today is on results, not on how well you work. You can’t build a skyscraper in a day, but you can build a shack.
  • I’m not a racist. . . But there are too many black players. Italy has no dignity, no pride.
  • You don’t have to have been a horse to be a jockey.
  • The accent today is on results, not on how well you work. You can’t build a skyscraper in a day, but you can build a shack.
  • “Sacchi would push his players to greater extremes by shouting instructions through a megaphone. “‘I hear Arrigo doesn’t shout anymore, he’s got himself a megaphone,’ my wife said to Tassotti one day. ‘That’s not strictly true,’ said Tasso. ‘Now he shouts into the megaphone.” ― Arrigo Sacchi, The Immortals: The Season My Milan Team Reinvented Football
  • “Maradona once said to me: “Even Ancelotti has become fast with you.” I was moved to clarify: “He’s not fast. He gets there first.” ― Arrigo Sacchi, The Immortals: The Season My Milan Team Reinvented Football
  • I’m not leaving because we’re in a bad situation. I’m leaving even sadder. It’s not easy to leave the most prestigious club in the world.
  • Real Madrid has always been happy with him and we thank him for what he has done here. We wish him all the luck in the future. He asked to leave because this is World Cup year and here he wasn’t always going to play. We didn’t want to loan him out and only when a big offer arrived did we accept his transfer. Arrigo Sacchi
  • The football I wanted was active also in the defensive phase. The players had to be protagonists through pressing.

ARRIGO SACCHI ARTICLES

  • Arrigo Sacchi: The AC Milan Legend’s All-Time Best XI Sports Illustrated
  • In profile: Arrigo Sacchi UEFA
  • Arrigo Sacchi: The Tactical Masters – If a manager is to be defined by the best team they ever coached, then few in history can match Arrigo Sacchi. In four seasons at the helm of AC Milan, between 1987 and 1991, Sacchi led his team to only one Serie A title – and that in his first year in charge, when he also claimed an Italian Super Cup. It is for the team’s exploits in Europe, however, that Sacchi is most revered. Back-to-back European Cup wins in 1989 and 1990 (below), followed by European Super Cup victories on each occasion, represent the product of a communion between world-class footballers and the work of a visionary, non-conformist and revolutionary coach. Sacchi arrived in Milan to no great fanfare. He had spent all of his 14-year coaching career to that point operating in the lower reaches of Italian football, but he had led Parma to the Serie C1 title in 1986 – and in the following season his team fell only three points short of an immediate promotion to Serie A. Along the way, however, Sacchi masterminded not one but two Coppa Italia wins over mighty AC Milan, with a style of play that captured the attention of Silvio Berlusconi. Coaches’ Voice
  • Arrigo Sacchi: Coached Milan To Great Success:
    Arrigo Sacchi came as a former shoe salesman, left as a legend, and rewrote calcio’s tactical rule book along the way. He coined some of the greatest quotes in managerial history, brought a number of the game’s most coveted winner’s medals back to his tiny hometown of Fusignano, and inspired a generation of coaches to realize their inventive dreams and calculate their way to success. – History of Soccer
  • The legacy of Arrigo Sacchi – Once Italian national team failed to obtain the qualification for the 1992 EURO, Federcalcio brought in legendary Milan’s head coach Arrigo Sacchi to lead Azzurri though the upcoming 1994 World Cup qualifying. As usual, Sacchi took the job following his visionary path. It drew him criticism as he left home some notable and loved players such as Inter’s goalkeeper Walter Zenga or forward Gianluca Vialli of Juventus. Simply, all of them weren’t suited to play into Arrigo Sacchi’s 4-4-2 and also weren’t able to fulfil the requests that former Milan coach’s tactical approach required. Total Football Analysis

ARRIGO SACCHI COACHING CONCEPTS / EXCERPTS

Italy 1994 World Cup Team

Once Italian national team failed to obtain the qualification for the 1992 EURO, Federcalcio brought in legendary Milan’s head coach Arrigo Sacchi to lead Azzurri though the upcoming 1994 World Cup qualifying. As usual, Sacchi took the job following his visionary path. It drew him criticism as he left home some notable and loved players such as Inter’s goalkeeper Walter Zenga or forward Gianluca Vialli of Juventus.

Simply, all of them weren’t suited to play into Arrigo Sacchi’s 4-4-2 and also weren’t able to fulfil the requests that former Milan coach’s tactical approach required. In fact, Sacchi’s football was highly demanding as he wanted his side controlling the game through ball retention whilst his players have to win the ball back as quick as possible through a continuous high pressure.

To reach this perfection peak, Sacchi constantly put emphasis on a daily basis work. He put his players through a lot of drills often involving all the squad working together. This method requires time to be assimilated by the players so Sacchi started to ask clubs to allow their players to reach special Azzurri’s training camps during the season while he also meticulously worked with them during the international breaks.

Sacchi and his coaching staff – which featured Carlo Ancelotti as assistant coach – thought of themselves as teachers more than simple coaches and they thought of Azzurri more as a club than a national team. It means that Sacchi trialled a lot of players during the period before the World Cup campaign, trying to install a lot of tactical concepts in order to force them thinking as a unit and not as a bunch of footballers coming from different clubs. – Total Football Analysis

Universality / Complete Soccer Players

“Arrigo Sacchi immediately instilled his philosophy of ‘Universality’ – that players should be comfortable operating in a number of positions and equipping themselves with the skills to play almost anywhere on the pitch. He had already enjoyed success with these methods with youth team players at Fiorentina and as manager of Rimini, who he regularly rotated during games and asked to become “complete soccer players.History of Soccer

Lacking Experience

It was one thing coaching young players with so much to learn; it was another thing convincing senior players to adapt their game to suit this vastly different style. The pressing had to be done in blocks with covering support, the counter-attacking had to be at five to six meters per second, and the possession needed to be efficiently used to penetrate the opposition at the earliest moment possible. History of Soccer

Arrigo Sacchi Shadow Play

Arrigo Sacchi’s initial work at Milan on the training pitch focused on a popular coaching style across the game, which he termed ‘shadow play.’ It involved players working as a unit, often without the ball, keeping their shape and changing their role according to what the opposition was predicted to do. Arrigo Sacchi’s initial work at Milan on the training pitch focused on a popular coaching style across the game, which he termed ‘shadow play.’

It involved players working as a unit, often without the ball, keeping their shape and changing their role according to what the opposition was predicted to do. A great story from the time emerged later. It was said that a scout from an opponent had hid in the bushes at Milan’s Milanello training ground and spied on Sacchi’s early sessions.

Upon reporting back to his club’s manager, he explained that Sacchi had the players working on shape … but without a ball. Sensing his staff member had gone crazy, the manager asked him to leave and continued his preparations for the game. They lost, and Milan kept a clean sheet. Despite being a self-professed disciplinarian, Arrigo Sacchi also believed in the power of harboring a tight-knit squad. The Italian once said: “To build a team, you must find players who speak the same language and can work well together. You cannot do anything on your own, and if you do, it won’t last long. I often quote Michelangelo: ‘The spirit guides the hand.’” History of Soccer

Arrigo Sacchi 4-4-2 System

His ideas were radical at the time. Sacchi believed that pressing in a 4-4-2 was possible, that shape could be retained and that overloading in crucial areas of the pitch through his full-backs would yield possession and control of the game. However, it was too much, too complicated even, for a small club like Bellaria, with whom Arrigo Sacchi was enjoying a two-year stint. History of Soccer

Arrigo Sacchi Style of Play

Sacchi’s first job at Milan was to create a new team culture. He wanted his players to cast aside the traditional Italian mentality of defending close to their own goal, and instead become a proactive team that defended on the front foot against opposition attacks. “The football I wanted was active also in the defensive phase,” he later wrote in his autobiography. “The players had to be protagonists through pressing.”

Sacchi educated his forwards in the work of putting pressure on their opposing central defenders in their build-up and control of the ball. This was based on a solid 4-4-2 formation, in which all players had to understand their positional relationship to each other. The Italian coach insisted that his side should be in a short and compact block (below), with no more than 25 metres between the defensive and front lines.

In this way, pressing did not represent a great physical effort for his players, and would allow those behind the first line of pressure line to organise and act immediately if that line was broken. This also made it very difficult for any opponent to find genuine and effective passing options. – Coaches’ Voice

Offensive Buildup

Offensive phase Italian teams were used to retreating and defending in their own backyard. The culture of the libero, one defender in a position deeper than the rest of the defensive line, who acted as one final barrier between the attackers and goal, still reigned. The idea of defenders actually being used as agents of build-up was almost unknown.

At Sacchi’s Milan, though, the build-up started with the defenders. The back line, typically made up of Mauro Tassotti, Alessandro Costacurta, Franco Baresi and Paolo Maldini, was responsible for carrying the ball forward. In doing so, the defenders – and in particular the superb Baresi – forced their opponents to leave their natural zones and press the ball; this in turn created spaces further forward for a midfield line of four that featured Frank Rijkaard and Carlo Ancelotti at its centre.

Tactical Defensive Phase

Sacchi’s defensive approach was most defined by his use of the press, which he employed to exploit the offside law as it stood at the time. For him, offside was less a tool to protect his defence, and more the first step in recovering possession and beginning another advance towards the opposition half. At that time, any attacker in advance of the defensive line was deemed offside – and Sacchi knew how to take advantage of this. He argued that his team should adopt an active approach in defence, rather than reactive, which resulted in the defensive line being set high, far from the goal defended by goalkeeper Giovanni Galli (below).

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